Beyond inertia

I am busy these days, so I'd just like to be able to sit down, write a straightforward review of David Ford's book, and be done with it. But I can't. This book has already begun to interfere with my life. It may even end up costing me real money. That check for the Kosovo relief effort I am now writing in my mind keeps getting outrageously larger. I worry that I might actually put it in the mail.

Sure, I see the pictures of the refugees in nearly every morning's newspaper, but until I read this deceptively simple little book, those people still hadn't entered all that far into my privileged "inner community," the little group of psychological intimates whose faces (and opinions, reactions and circumstances) I actually pay attention to. Why are they gaining entry now?